New Delhi: A delegation from state-run China Railway Construction Corp. Ltd (CRCCL), led by the country’s chief economist Zhao Jinuha, met a team of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) officials on Monday and expressed interest in investing in road projects in India.

China Railway is one of the world’s largest integrated engineering contractor and construction groups with over $100 billion revenue.

“The delegation was apprised about the upcoming opportunities in highway sector which has several projects lined up for upgradation from two lane to four and six lane totaling around 50,000kms, various special expressway projects of around 15,000km,” NHAI spokesperson Praveen Tyagi said.

A senior NHAI official requesting anonymity who was also part of the meeting said the visiting delegation had several queries and one was about India accepting Chinese technical standards to which the Indian response was that if their standards are higher than the ones prescribed by the Indian Road Congress, then those would be acceptable.

They were also keen to know if there were any restrictions on sources of procurement from abroad, import certifications requirements and if dollar could be the currency of repayment (as annuity) and availability of repayment guarantee and proof of capacity of the client (NHAI) to repay (i.e. to pay the annuity and the funding under the Hybrid Annuity Model) to provide comfort to their lenders, he said.